Roundup: Olympic Condom Ads, New Polling on Abortion Rights

Olympic Condom Ads … Chinese condom company Elasun is using the upcoming Olympic games to creatively, but very simply, promote its products to the Chinese people and visitors alike. The company’s condoms take the place of well-known sports equipment in the ads, here’s the Elasun take on basketball:

Stephen Hutcheon of Aussie paper the Brisbane Times has the rest of the images and adds this bit of interesting trivia, via Reuters:

Speaking of prophylactics, Reuters reports that the phrase "avoiding pregnancy" has become a euphemistic way of saying that you’re going to avoid the Olympics.

In Chinese, "bi-yun", means contraception. "Ao-yun" means the
Olympics. So bi-yun in the context of the Games is a sort of double
entendre meaning avoiding the Games.

I remember in Sydney how scores of people left the city over the
Games period rather than put up with the perceived inconvenience. As it
turned out, however, Sydney has probably never functioned more
smoothly. Public transport worked, the roads were empty and it was a
great atmosphere.

But with all over zealous security measures in place, it’s probably
a good time for the locals to take a short break a long way away from
Beijing.

Interesting Polling on Abortion Rights … The Christian Science Monitor’s Dante Chinni posted an article today that breaks down support for abortion rights by an interesting set of demographics and uses the polling to predict that Barack Obama, a supporter of abortion rights, may have an edge over John McCain in terms of total votes on the issue. Of course that assumes that turnout matches the polling sample.

More on the HHS Anti-contraception Proposal … I’m sure you know the story by now… the Bush administration’s department of Health and Human Services leaked a proposed rule
two weeks ago that would limit women’s access to contraception by
redefining popular birth control methods as abortion and legally
empowering medical practitioners to deny dispensing birth control to
women with a prescription. The regulation would also remove all
federal funding from subsidized birth control that millions of low
income women depend on. The proposed regs have been reported in just
about every main stream media source and commented on fairly
exhaustively by leading activists and politicians, including Sen. Hillary Clinton right here on RH Reality Check.

Can anyone point me to any statements released by the Obama campaign about the HHS proposal? I’d like to see what he had to say about it, or, if he hasn’t said anything, write him a nice long letter about it…

invalid-0

Obama signed the letter written by Sen. Patty Murray and Sen. Clinton opposing the proposal.